Socially Active

THE WAR AGAINST WISDOM

Category: Presidential Awareness

Trump’s Anti-People Priorities

We have seen the real Donald Trump and his actions prove that he is against people and their bodies and brains. As the President slashes and murders policies and programs that were designed to protect people, the environment and promote education, we will all suffer from his war against wisdom.

On Earth Day 2017, we had the usual parades, but this year’s celebration included a March for Science to promote “science?” WHAT? When did we get to the point where SCIENCE needed to fight for respect? The misconceptions that have been fed into Trump’s deformed brain are obviously the product of other small thinkers who have avoided facts. When you say, something is a hoax, you have to show the facts in science.

The idea that we can eliminate concepts like the Environment Protection Agency and curb the destruction that is taking place in rivers, streams and the air we breathe is so rash and irresponsible. When we have another water crisis, like Flint, we can all blame the Donald for the disaster.

Most military experts agree that job one of the United States State Department is to produce facts and solutions in simmering spots around the world. Before we send in the Marines, we expect our state department to figure out how to solve the problem before we get into wars and conflicts. Why would Trump cut jobs and decease the infrastructure of State when the world isn’t getting any safer? Even Russia complained about the lack of personnel in the department.

And in Education: As the Center for America Progress reports: Trump budget would slash $9 billion—13 percent of the U.S. Department of Education’s funding—while investing $1.4 billion of new money in school choice, including private school vouchers, sending a clear signal that the Trump administration prioritizes ideologically driven voucher schemes over great public schools. Of course, the middle class may benefit if they have a private school that fits their dogma in their district, but most of the people who voted for Trump will suffer with poor public schools. In ten years, we can all blame Peggy DeVos and Donald Trump for poorly prepared graduates who can’t get jobs.

On Earth Day, President Tweet wrote: “I am committed to keeping our air and water clean but always remember that economic growth enhances environmental protection. Jobs matter!” With this, the President has staked out a position that no money in his budget should be spent on anything that monitors, analyzes or works to solve climate change. Just because a company makes a lot of money doesn’t mean they will protect their workers or the environment. As a Pittsburgher in the 40s and 50s can tell you, the air wasn’t so clean while US steel companies made tons of money.

And what piece of the pie grows in the Trump budget? There will be a $54 billion increase in Military spending, but due to his mystical promise to lower the national debt he must cut something else out of the budget.

His minions appear to be going after spending as if they are more out to undo the Obama agenda without regard for progress. Trump’s departments and commissions are holding up money to projects that have already been approved. Why?

The Federal Transit Administration put a $650 million federal grant for electrification of a San Francisco Bay Area train system in purgatory. The delay would stop California’s high-speed rail project, which sounds like the infrastructure upgrade Trump kept touting during the campaign. The train line is more than thirty-years old and needs to be upgraded for environmental and safety reasons. The actions are anti-people policies that do more harm than good.

FactCheck.Org

According to Fortune magazine, if “parity” reigns, and both sides of the discretionary budget rise $54 billion in fiscal 2017, total debt and deficits over the next decade will balloon by around $1.4 trillion, including interest expense on the extra debt.

So, Donald Trump lied to America when he said he would lower the debt in his first year. The facts on the issue are clear, his proposals are no different than Obama or Bush on spending money. We all have to remember, when Clinton passed a very unpopular tax increase in his first year he was able to lower the deficit. These are facts and the thickness of the ice at the north pole are facts, not opinions.

Science was used by the Wright Brothers to figure out how to fly. We sure hope President Donald J. Trump understands that every time he steps on to Air Force One, he is benefiting from science. We don’t need a March for Science, we need to fund science and education to keep America great. Does Agent Orange understand this? Sad!

Power Delegated is Power Lost

Most administrations in this great land of the United States have juggled the temptation to take power away from the states with the more conservative viewpoint that states should decide what is right for their people. Attempting to keep both balls in the air has brought tons of law suits and taxed the Department of Justice with major decisions and minor peccadillos.

Donald Trump has fallen into the trap quite nicely. His red meat rhetoric that he throws to the hungry masses will actually reduce some of his ability to get things done. He obviously doesn’t understand that the enumerated powers of Congress listed in the Tenth Amendment are not his powers, they are Congressional muscle.

And if you actually read that amendment, you will see that it is very clear: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Focus on that last phrase, Powers that are reserved to the people. When Donald Trump wants to fix healthcare by giving the states more power to determine how it works and what can or cannot be done, he diminishes the power of the President and the federal programs he promised to improve to help people.

In the latest aberration of the Healthcare re-write, the compromisers have slipped a little stick of dynamite into the paragraphs. They are proposing to give a state the right to charge more for those who have pre-existing conditions. Wow, really? If a guy walks in with cancer, you can tax him just like a pharmaceutical company. Who the hell are these people?

With 4-20-2017 now just purple haze in the rearview mirror, we find another conflict looming on the horizon: the right of a state to regulate the growing and sales of marijuana. In Colorado, marijuana tax revenue hit $200 million and sales are set to pass $1 billion this year. What was once a judicial, social and medical over-reach has been turned into a windfall for the mountain state. Even college scholarship programs are being funded out of these taxes and revenues.

When our government was taken over by goodie-two-shoes in the 1920s, the religious right created a constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages that remained in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban didn’t stop people from making, buying or drinking alcohol. It just made America a dull place for 13 years. Finally, FDR decided that people should have a legal way to let off some steam.

Now some out-of-touch people in power want to take federal legal action against those states that have taken medical and recreational marijuana reform to the bank. The new Attorney General knows best about what marijuana is because he most likely has never smoked marijuana. Donald Trump has said he has never smoked pot or cigarettes and of course, he would be best to judge what smoking cannabis does. Full on irony here, folks.

When you say you want to give more power to the states, but you are selective in how you apply that philosophy, you create confusion. Just like when you ignore scientists’ evaluations on climate change, you seem out of touch. When you disregard the medical evidence that marijuana can help people, you are like those people back 100 years ago who thought they could defeat alcoholism by controlling everyone. The myths created about marijuana are slowly going up in smoke.

Some polls put the support for national legalization at 61%. That is clearly more people than who voted for Trump. Even Canada has taken the move to legalize the herb. What are we waiting for?

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said on a radio interview, “I am really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the President of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power.”

Back at you Jeff, I really am amazed that a non-elected cabinet member from a state that doesn’t even have a lottery gets to decide how a state handles its medical and recreational use of certain natural plants.

What we really need is for all those who have a vote on marijuana at the federal level to fire up a doobie and relax. It’s not ‘oxy’ or heroin. Keep your eye on the important stuff.

The Trump Illusion of Openness

Donald J Trump likes to put his name on everything. Like a dog urinating to mark his turf, our President thinks that he can just say it, and it is; like his pronouncement the other day that NATO is not obsolete. He continues to play the role of the boy who cried wolf and when faced with a real wolf he pets and feeds the animal. Whose side are you on?

Whatever you say about Mr. Know-it-all, you have to admit he can lie on a dime. If you believe what he says is his policy, then you have to also be able to roll with the punches when he tells you what you believed has changed. Real commitments with Trump don’t seem to be that important. His actions speak louder than his screaming harangues at the rallies.

He says he is open and transparent, but doesn’t want you to know who visits him at the White House. Why? That is not his private property; it is an open and free house of the people. Trump keeps talking about how he’s not a guy who telegraphs his moves and his claim of his unpredictability as some kind of power he has over other people, seems rather suspect.

If Trump was really so cloak and dagger, why would he keep using Twitter? He psychological vomits openly, while he doesn’t want you to know who enters the White House. Strange.

Trump accused Obama of a lack of transparency, while he wallows in this need to control the narrative What if a public company in this country decided that the FEC wasn’t allowed to see their books? He would call this what? Good? Whose side are you on?

Donald, you keep regurgitating that your most recent taxes are under audit. What you should be asking is what is it taking the IRS so long to audit your taxes. You want everyone else in the government to do their jobs and get things done, but not the IRS? If you just released your tax returns you would cement a precedent that all VPs and Presidents must release them in the future. Wouldn’t that be good for America? Whose side are you on?

Many people who support Trump may not really care if he cheated on his taxes, but there are millions, yes Donald, millions of citizens of this great country who truly believe that transparency is a good thing and that you are a servant of the people, not the CEO of a private company called the United States of America. You owe the American people the facts of your financial dealings. What could you possibly be hiding in those forms? Whose side are you on?

Being secretive may have been your method as a builder tycoon, but as your bankruptcy papers reveal, sooner or later people will find out what all this means. And while you are working for us, we would appreciate it if you would come clean and show us what is so problematic about releasing your taxes. Even your nemesis Hillary Clinton released decades of tax returns, but as you said the election is over.

And since the election, you have become more isolated and less forthright than what most supporters would have assumed. And your put-down of Obama for playing golf too much really demonstrates your do-as-I-say rather than being an example of your true beliefs and values.

Some reports claim that Trump has played golf 19 times since becoming President, but the sad thing is that the White House wouldn’t even comment on that stat. Why? Why would something so mundane as the number of hours Trump spent on the golf course be some government secret? Dwight Eisenhower is turning in his grave.

We don’t care how much gold you play Donald Trump, but we truly care about transparency. Be honest, is that possible? Sad!

Chameleon Trump Showing True Colors

We’ve all had bad bosses in our lives. And there were times that our bosses kept bad guys around much too long. Some big guys like to have someone around who can be the bad cop when a dastardly deed has to be done. (Like yelling at the Freedom Caucus, that worked?) Others want to be reminded that people are not that important to the success of the enterprise. (The deconstruction of the administrative state is an anti-people statement)

Some keep negative people around because the person becomes the only buddy a guy has. I have even seen bosses keep someone around because they too, were a smoker. Strange.

When Donald Trump raged at the rallies I kept thinking it was an act. He was pro-choice when he was producing offspring, but magically became anti-abortion when he started having grandkids. He appeared to be a real free market man with his actions of having his clothing line made in China to using Japanese steel in his buildings.

He kept screaming about how bad immigrants are, but used immigrants to build his empire. And his immigration force to separate families, much like what happened during WWII both in Germany and the U.S., seemed heartless. I guess he thinks it’s okay to destroy a family, but not okay to kill babies. We get it.

And now we see his liberal, Orthodox Jewish daughter, Ivanka, known as Yael in the Temple, has become the inner conscientiousness of the Donald. According to some reports, she presented the pictures of the babies choking for life in Syria that convinced her father to reverse is policies about Syria completely.

Steve Bannon’s ex-wife testified in a legal document in the state of California that Steve didn’t want his kids to attend a private school because of the number of Jewish kids at a specific school. Bannon’s reason? He didn’t like the way ‘they’ raised their kids to be ‘whiny brats’ and that he didn’t want his girls going to school with Jews.

That remark could be written off if Bannon didn’t end up being the money behind and the editorial force in front of Breitbart News. It’s the same publication that raised this headline: ‘Bill Kristol: Republican spoiler, renegade Jew’ and, ironically, the Website that was started by Andrew Breitbart, a person raised in a Jewish family.

Politics is a sticky force and with video everywhere it’s hard not to have researchers pull up every word you said on any issue. When you claim, your position is one thing, so loudly and so strongly, then within 100 days change central platforms, it’s more than a midcourse correction, it’s a damn flip-flop.

Sooner or later the chameleon finds himself sitting on top of a leaf where he wants to stay for a while; a place he might feel more comfortable and so he changes to that color and hopes no one notices his transformation.

Imagine how Steve Bannon feels coming to work every day knowing that the person he thought he could control is, quite frankly, uncontainable. And that is also the challenge for son-in-law Jared Kushner and princess daughter Ivanka.

The kids, or as they have been called, the “democrats” have to move slowly before they rid the kingdom of the less than worthy. Jared got Chris Christie out of the way, the man who helped convict his father of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering and who pushed Charles Kushner into 14 months of federal prison. The kids also drove the big mouth Giuliani out of the picture so Trump wouldn’t get distorted by his dogma.

The reason Ivanka couldn’t vote for her father in the primaries, was because she was a registered Democrat and didn’t understand that in New York primaries you can vote only for candidates in your party. So the nickname ‘democrats’ actually works in this case.

Bannon will only get in the way and prove to be a distraction that actually hurts the country and will force the President to be someone he is not.

As the “kids” slowly work their familial magic and massage Trump’s positions into the middle, Bannon will be an unnecessary third-wheel. The generals certainly don’t want him around. The lawyers don’t want him around – just look at the messy, poorly written executive orders. And of course, this is a family affair and the ‘renegade Jews’ aren’t outsiders, they are INSIDERS, and the President listens when they whine.

Within days the Donald declares NATO is not obsolete, China appears to now be an ally and not a currency manipulator. Are we are starting to see a President who seems to be thinking reasonably?

Okay, he blew off 60 Tomahawks but the attack didn’t destroy the runway. The carpet bombs must have been made out of real carpet?

Trump now realizes that Russian President V. Putin is not his friend, but he still won’t dress him down as hard as Nikki Halley and Rex Tillerson. We heard how his buddy denies those chemicals were even used. Putin, using a move out of the Donald’s playbook, has pushed back and even called the allegations, ‘trumped-up charges.”

And the crazy kid in North Korea is ready to test the President. Bannon was against the bombing of the airbase in Syria because his ideology is actually getting in the way of how the world actually works. Bannon is an isolationist, while Trump has become a new born globalist. How did that happen?

Even domestically, Bannon sees the world as US and THEM, but in this country, we are a people united, or as some say, citizens united. Who knew being leader of the free world would be so hard. Sad!